OU on the BBC: The Human Mind

Programme 1 - Get Smart
First broadcast on 1st October 2003, 9pm, BBC ONE

The first programme in the series uncovers what happens in our minds when we learn, remember and have original ideas. It explores what we can do to improve our ability to learn and manipulate knowledge, and shows how eating fish oils may help boost our brain power.

Professor Robert Winston looks at how memory can be improved and how we can learn physical tasks more easily. He discovers what happens when we have those "eureka" moments of original thought - and how to have more of them.

We meet the fire chief who tapped into his intuitive powers and saved the lives of his fire crew and follow a trainee midwife in the run-up to her exams. Will she be able to remember the huge amount of information she’ll need to know to pass? More importantly, can she apply it to a real childbirth?

Programme 2 - Personality
First broadcast on 8th October 2003, 9pm, BBC ONE

Personality explores what it is that makes us who we are and uncovers the universal battle we face to master our emotions and control our behaviour.

Professor Robert Winston explores how our minds shape our personalities throughout our lives, and reveals how personality traits like extroversion and introversion develop. Find out how parents can affect the personalities of their children, why teenagers are so emotionally sensitive and what lies at the heart of characteristics like anger and mood–swings in adults.

Discover what we can change about our personalities - and what we can’t. And see a man successfully transform his personality to be more as he’d like it to be.

Programme 3 - Making Friends
First broadcast on 15th October 2003, 9pm, BBC ONE

Why is a party one of the most demanding and complex situations the human mind ever has to deal with? This programme investigates the extraordinary way that our minds work to allow us to communicate with other people.

Professor Winston discovers how we recognise people, read their faces and bodies to understand what they’re thinking, and then charm them.

Find out how to tell whether a smile is genuine, what happens when people 'click' with one another, and how to spot when someone's lying.

We follow a young woman as she travels halfway across the world to confront her very own social obstacle course. Can she win over her New Zealand fiancé’s friends and family in the week before she gets married?

The Human Mind in more depth: